Welcome to the first episode of How to Become a Career Coach.

I’m Scott Anthony Barlow and I started Happen To Your Career in 2012 because I wanted to help people make big career changes, advance their careers, learn how take control of their life and work, but most of all to help people find and do work that makes them more happy more often and uses what we call their signature strengths

Since that time, we’ve been able to help many thousands of people make changes that not only impacted their careers and their income, but helped to radically change their lives.

I haven’t done this by myself. Along the way, I’ve trained others how to be career coaches as well.

We’ve done this by creating a Professional Career coaching Training and certification program to help give people additional training and support as they got started as career coaches.

We created this podcast to showcase how you can get started too in Career Coaching or even determine if it’s right for you!

Our plan is for this to be a multi-season podcast. This first season is going to be full of experienced career coaches sharing their story and lessons.

Our goal is to help you get a realistic picture of what it’s like to be career coach and how you can get started.

As we bring these experts on, we’ll ask them questions like:

• What prompted you make the decision to become a career coach?
• What qualifies you to be a career coach?
• What qualifications do you need to become a career coach?
• How did you overcome this?
• What were the biggest tools or resources to help you get started?
• How did you know it was time to make the leap? (scared or don’t know how to get clients)
• What gave you the confidence to become a career coach?  
• How did you get your first clients?
• If you had 3 months to start your business and get into career coaching instead of the months or years it would take-- what would you do?

Let me give you a glimpse into what a day in the life of a career coach actually looks like.

Then you can see what it’s really like inside a successful coaching business during the first year I was full time as a career coach. That year we brought in $153,502 (keep in mind there are expenses in running a business so not all of this is profit). Later on I brought other coaches into the business and started doing much less of the career coaching myself.

DAY IN THE LIFE OF A FULL TIME CAREER COACH

I personally love this stuff. It’s fun for me. I’ve helped many coaches grow a practice of their own that also love it, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.

It truly takes the type of person that is intuitive, enjoys having continuous conversations about careers and life. Also someone cares enough about other people to go the extra mile to help them make sure they get the results they want.

Now here’s something that’s counterintuitive!

It’s actually a good “sign” that you might be the type of person who would be successful by being a career coach if you’re a little bit scared about whether or not you can deliver the results that you would want for your clients - Great Career Coaches think about and obsess over that stuff!

Also if you are willing to go the extra mile for people even though you’re nervous about whether or not you can deliver! (Sometimes I still have that feeling to this day because I badly want the people we work with to have an amazing experience!)

People who wouldn’t make great coaches aren’t even thinking about that sort of thing!

Check out the Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Career Coach!

You’re in for a treat today because today we are in discussion with Tracy Timm, who is an amazing coach within my coaching universe. Tracy talks about how her own lack of career clarity and inability to find resources that led her to believe if she could find her own perfect career niche, she could also help other people find their career their fit.

In today’s episode you will learn -

Tracy’s struggle in her corporate career.

• Her opinion on the current generation being victim to box checking. Excelling at everything we do and the childhood rat race of perform, perform, perform.
• Attending Yale and discovering through studying psychology that she was passionate about people.
• Her journey of solving the problem of not fitting into the quintessential career choice boxes that were available at Yale through formulating a proven strategy to help a wider audience.
• Coming to the realization that she wanted to choose coaching as a full-time career and not only because she has been through the similar problems.
• Her insights into how you do not have to go into a full-time job to reaffirm your chosen career.
• The experience she had at her first coaching job and how she sustained herself financially while further exploring the industry.
• Tracy discusses how she let all the noise of opinions affect her decisions, where things did not turn out as she had anticipated. This was the final sign she needed to enter the coaching space.
• How she was able to make meaningfully different choices based on what she learnt from her failures.
• Being true to yourself and not being caught up in the struggle of competing with people in your market.
• The various iterations of her business models, the learnings that led to her creating a digital program and building her business through different strategies.
• Learning that you can deploy the information passively. There is so much power in accountability, discovery and process that you must go through together.
• For aspiring coaches, your goal should be consistent accountable revenues, she also explains how to achieve them.
• She advises future coaches on the importance of realising what you want to do in coaching and how you would prefer building your business model around it.

Tracy shares her insights on procuring the first few clients -

1. Work with people in the coaching space and learn how good coaching conversations are structured.
2. Tracy endorses the idea of getting a coach yourself in the initial stages.
3. Tactical part of getting clients takes time. She encourages aspiring coaches to do intensive research and start dialogues from other people. Some of these conversations can potentially become networks that got her business.
4. Start discussions with people, be genuinely interested and ask the right questions.
5. Remain open to changing business models, it will evolve over time.
6. Finding your niche.
7. Use LinkedIn, it is the largest CRM system out there. You can find whoever you want to serve on there.

The lessons she learned in the coaching business -

1. Effective coaches need to be good listeners.
2. Tactfully present information that resonates with the targeted customers.
3. Learning how to build a business as you coach simultaneously.

Tracy shares her experience with Geeta Nadkarni’s business development training “Impact with Influence”, defining her guide in the following three steps –

• Clarify - Who are you serving, lay out the demographics and identify your ideal customer avatar.
• Simplify - How you deliver outcomes to your ideal customer?
• Amplify - Publicise your services and what value you are offering?

To find out more about Tracy and connect with her visit her website where you can also learn about her certified coaching, retreats and schedule a phone call with her.

If you'd like to become a career coach, or even just explore if it's right for you, check out How to Be a Career Coach and find the help you need.

Check out the Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Career Coach!

Today We have with us Kelly Poulson who has been a coach for a long time. We have worked together in several capacities over the past few months.

In today’s discussion, we will talk about:

• The journey that led to her coaching career, how different professional roles and conversations led to a full-time coaching career and how she discovered coaching.
• The books that triggered her career transition when she first discovered coaching. (The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly)
• What qualifies someone to be a career coach - the important pieces that prepare you for becoming a successful career coach. Listening, creative space, safe space to think out loud.
• What are the most effective things we can do to develop necessary skills to become an effective career coach?
• The little experiences that built up to her leaping into a full-time coaching career.
• The most difficult decisions and biggest hurdles she had to face and how she melded her approach, developing strategies to overcome them.
• Kelly’s advice to aspiring coaches out there and how she chose her way into coaching full time.
• The importance of choosing your niche target market in your coaching career.
• Her journey’s evolution from deciding she wanted to go leap full time into career coaching to getting her first few clients.

Given the chance, Kelly shares the following insights upon being asked how she would shape her coaching career and strategize given the resources available if she hadn’t had the relevant coaching experience already.

• Jump into coaching with the available resources and build them up as you go.
• Get professional training for coaching, business development and any other areas you feel you need professional help with.
• Get support to get the business up and running.

If you have any further questions, you can connect with Kelly on her website or on her LinkedIn.

Do you find yourself ending up in conversation about other people’s careers repeatedly? If you find yourself helping people with these areas and enjoy yourself while at it. Then you’ll enjoy coaching full time tremendously!

To binge-listen to all the Career Coach episodes: https://www.happentoyourcareer.com/how-to-become-a-career-coach-podcast/

Or check our our Professional Career Coach Training program

Check out the Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Career Coach!